Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. For the next three weeks

we are going to look at unlikely places where the reformation took hold and the first

is Seville, Spain.

We talk about Geneva and Cambridge and Vittenberg, of course.

But let's talk about Seville.

We could talk about Seville for its role in literature.

Miguel de Servantes spent three months in custody there,

during which it is believed that he thought up his famous character Don Quixote.

And where would Opera be without Seville, Spain?

Someone tallied it up and came up with a figure of about 150 operas that have Seville as their

setting.

The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart.

The barber of, of course, Seville by Rosini,

Bezay's Carmen and even Beethoven's Fidelio

take Seville as their setting.

But what of the reformation?

Well first, this is deep in Roman Catholic Church territory.

So the story of Protestants in Seville

is the story of persecution. And so on September 24th, 1559, 19 so-called

heretics by officials of the Inquisition were burned at the stake.

18 persons and one person in effigy who had died previously while in custody and in fact not only was

he burned in Effigy but his bones were dug up and they were burned too.

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